


St Lorcán’s Night, 1813

by alcyone (Alcyone301)



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, happy birthday mandc and pd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-01 11:21:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alcyone301/pseuds/alcyone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(aka getting pissed for St L’s night)<br/><em>Surprise</em>, at sea, in the eastern Mediterranean, around the time of Ionian Mission/Treason’s Harbour<br/>Nothing happens, just chat.<br/>Characters and setting the property of the much-regretted Patrick O’Brian and his heirs, and are borrowed with profound respect and love.<br/>Many thanks to the awesome alltoseek, a superb beta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	St Lorcán’s Night, 1813

They had spent the latter part of the evening, the very pleasant evening, on a first attempt at the partially completed transcription of a _balletto_ in six movements; it was unpretentious, but with some lovely melodic lines. Jack had found a worn book of German suites from the last age in an open market in Malta; it had already proved the source, with some modifications, of two engaging duets. Stephen had recently selected another one, and had begun the tedious process of transcribing music written for five into something that could be undertaken by two; he had thought Jack might like this one, with its technical challenges for the violin, and he, reading it to himself, had thought it might have something to say about harmony and beauty in the face of pain and violence; and the cello parts were amusing. They had fallen out, however, at the brief third movement, which Stephen wished to play as a minuet; Jack was convinced it was meant to be a sarabande, and after several attempts ended in musical if not personal discord, they abandoned it in favour of toasted cheese and another decanter or two of Madeira.

Setting his cello carefully to one side, Stephen observed, “Perhaps we have reached a natural end to tonight’s revels – look, the second decanter is empty. Where does the time go? How can we fail to notice its passing, with all these bells forever being struck?”

“Why, Stephen,” replied Jack, “I cannot say I am unaware of time passing – while I don’t consciously hear a bell and tell myself what o’clock it is, I would dam’ well notice one being missed. And even without the bells, my stomach … Killick! Killick there, light along the toasted cheese.”

“Which here is the decanter, and how I am to keep them full and bring your cheese with only the two hands I’d like to know, never a moment’s peace, and no warning at all.” The steward shuffled away, relentlessly grumbling.

Picking up the score, roughed out entire, though incomplete, Jack followed Stephen to the table and sat reading it, lips pursed in a sibilant unvoiced ghost of melody, gently nodding his head to a silent tempo, as they waited for their supper.

“I tell you what it is, Stephen, I can’t see how this will all hang together - a couple of little melodies and a couple of dances – but the fifth movement looks like thumping great fun; so many notes. Maybe we could play it by itself.”

“Thumping indeed, joy, it’s meant to represent swordplay, I believe; and your more strenuous parts continually resolve into quite charming melody. But I have an idea the piece will be worth our persisting.” Handing Jack his refilled glass, he continued, “There is certainly a train of thought there, not to be articulated except by playing.“

Killick returned, bearing another decanter and plates, setting them down with wholly unnecessary emphasis and a surreptitious shove at the scores, barely avoiding contact with Jack’s person; Jack assumed a look of bland tolerance, and Stephen busied himself with the decanter, lips twitching. Killick returned shortly with the toasted cheese, bubbling in its noble silver dish, and their somewhat self-conscious expressions changed to those of unfeigned pleasure.

“Off with you, Killick, we can take care of ourselves, and it’s time you were abed, you need your beauty sleep, ha ha,” said Jack. Muttering unintelligibly, the steward left, banging the door behind him.

An interval of near silence ensued, punctuated by the clinking of plates and glassware and an occasional audible gust of wind dashing rain upon the stern windows; the sense of warmth and well-being within the great cabin was palpable.

After a time, as he picked at the remains of the cheese, Stephen ventured, “Have you ever contemplated upon the nature of time, my dear? For our evening’s concert foundered upon a very small little difference in time, indeed, and yet –“

“All the time, Stephen,” laughing; “the life of the ship runs upon time, not unlike music upon the staff, with the bells marking the measure; and aside from that, it is necessary to understand time in order to navigate – to know where we are, in fact. The sky is an absolutely accurate timepiece, and reading the movements of celestial bodies, we can tell what time it is locally, compare it to our chronometers’ Greenwich time, and thus fix our position upon the globe, and chart our course in concert with the tides and to some extent the winds.”

Lost in memory for a few moments, Jack resumed, “There was a squeaker, Lawrence Poole, the son of Richard Poole, second on the _Bellerophon_ , who sailed with us on the _Boadicea_ , do you remember him, Stephen?”

“The little lad with a cast in his eye, given to malingering?”

“Yes, that’s the one .. I wonder what became of him, he was so very slow. He told me once he thought it was unnecessary to learn how to tell noon; surely the sandglass did that.”

“Soul, how was that wrong?”

“Why, Stephen, because it is the motions of the earth about the sun that dictate the time of day and the seasons; the sandglass is set to the sun, and merely counts divisions; he was confusing the thing with how the thing is measured, you see.”

“But the thing, Jack, is Time, and what is its nature? Is it not folly to believe that in measuring it, we grasp it? Why is it so swift now, such a laggard then? Myself I cannot define it. Like Augustine, I think I know what it is, until I try to explain it.”

“Why, brother, now at last I see why you are so very .. ah, that is, why you so often fail to notice time passing.” Smiling, Jack swallowed the last of the cheese and, scooping up their glasses and another decanter, returned to the stern lockers and his violin.

“I think perhaps you can’t explain it without reference to what it does. The immutable heavens act as a timepiece -- “

“Not so immutable, brother. What of falling stars? Comets? The moon, for all love?” Settling in his chair, Stephen produced a knob of rosin, and picking up his bow, began applying it to the worn hair.

Jack refrained from remarking that to a sailor, comets, at least, were perfectly understandable, and the moon a model of regularity; observing to himself, ‘better to remain silent than tell no fibs,’ he contented himself with offering, “I am sure they obey their own laws, and if we don’t understand it we think it’s random; but it appears to be random only because most of what they do is offstage, so to speak, and they just pop up now and then, into our sky.”

“Do you tell me so?” Handing Jack the rosin in response to his gesture, Stephen played a phrase from the second adagio of their well-loved Corelli in C, slowly, thoughtfully. “Until you attempted to teach me different, I was convinced the moon obeyed no law, no law at all. Now at least I know there may perhaps be some rational explanation for the moon’s capricious behaviour, and the tides which you have often told me do her bidding; but sure I cannot understand it. It is perhaps some inherent imbecility, a wilful stubborn ignorance, for when you explain it, her motions make perfect sense, and I congratulate myself for having penetrated her mystery at last; but not a day later I am once again baffled, looking east for a full moon rising in the evening when I should be looking southwest for a waxing crescent moon, setting at midnight; and I find myself returning to what my senses tell me, that she is a wayward unstable whimsical body who will not submit to the rule of the sun, nor to any other.”

“Why, her motions are perfectly regular, Stephen. She faces the earth, and takes her light from the sun, so .. “

“Oh, forbear, Jack, I can no more grasp your meaning, so late in the evening and so as it were afloat upon a sea of Madeira, than you can the perfectly straightforward rules of Linnaean taxonomy, insisting as you so often do that anything less familiar than a shearwater, and undesirable, must be a reptile.”

Jack glanced somewhat anxiously at his friend, for he could not help connecting that self-declared willful stubborn imbecility with Diana - indeed was there not something about the moon and that other, the Roman, Diana? – and thus the asperity of his tone, so unexpected; but after a moment he reflected that all seemed well in that quarter (quarter, moon, ha ha), and with relief he correctly attributed Stephen’s brief impatience to the circumstance of the rosin, now lying comfortably in Jack’s pocket.

Rain spattered on the stern windows as another aberrant gust passed. Giving up on all that which could not be said, at least by him at this time (ha ha) of day, Jack restarted the third movement of the Corelli; Stephen joined in presently, and they played it through to the end. Jack was well pleased with a piece of music so correct, wholly on its own terms, needing no great effort to understand, with nuances he could express with precision and even eloquence.

Stephen, picking up his glass and sipping, resumed, “Nature is perhaps not so exacting as His Majesty’s service, yet there are measures of time, prevailing tempi there as well. The great glorious orchestration of the natural world, reflected in large and in small: measures like heart rates, diurnal behaviours, gestation, and greater tempi, seasons, migrations – how do the birds conduct their travels, navigating to the same nesting place at the same time every year? Do they read the stars as you accomplished sailors do? There are locusts who know when seventeen years have passed, trees that bloom once in a century, and I dare say more extreme examples that pass unrecognized by us, our perception obscured by our own little measures: birth, growth, puberty, maturity, senescence.” With an almost imperceptible sigh, as Jack refilled their glasses: “The latter approaches, Jack.”

“Shall I alert the watch? Oh ha ha!”

“We are approximately halfway through our allotted span of threescore and ten already, incessantly marking the passage of time with our own changes. Can we be said to be the same people we were even a few years ago?”

Jack ran through a quick reprise of a theme from the Corelli allegro; then becoming thoughtful, “We may be, but the children ain’t. Their lives appear to me in abrupt changes; I think of them for months as one thing and when I see them they are entirely different creatures, bless them. But when I consider how little I must be to them: a name, an occasional noisy disruption in their lives, I feel quite low.“

Remorseful for leading the conversation in this direction, Stephen protested, “Sure you are more than that. They have Sophie’s example before them, soul, of constant love, and her great pride in you.”

“Stephen, were I to die on this voyage, what would the children remember of me?”

“I am sure she reads them your letters, so full of detail and indeed of your daily thoughts and feelings, and repeats the tales of your exploits.”

“I am to be just a collection of stories, then.”

“And what hero of antiquity could claim to be more?”

“You are missing the point, Stephen.”

“No, my dear, you are missing your home and your family. Come, let us try this again.”

They played the third movement of the new suite again, first in one tempo, then the other, without reaching accord; there was a difficulty with the transcription, perhaps, as well.

Crossing his arms over the cello’s shoulders, Stephen watched Jack pursuing the melodic train of thought, bow soft upon the strings.

“Nay, brother, leave it. Let it mature unattended; perhaps when next we visit it, we shall be nearer accord. Give it time,” he added, with a smile.

Jack laughed. Stephen rose and went to the quarter gallery. Returning, he found Jack once more playing the third movement, more slowly now. Filling his glass, he returned to his seat and brought the cello between his knees, but did not pick up the bow. “You may be right, Jack, it does sound well as a sarabande; but I am too tired, and have perhaps drunk a bit much, to pursue this further tonight.”

Jack, whose countenance had been rosy red since well before the end of the second dog watch, and whose words were a bit louder than was usual in the cabin, if less clearly enunciated, boggled slightly at this; as far as he could see, his friend never appeared impaired by drink. But it was so characteristically Stephen, to say calmly and with precision and insight why he was no longer capable of calm, precision and insight.

In the ensuing silence Jack paced slowly along the stern windows, pausing to look out into the darkness; presently, with a somewhat distracted air, he began to play a melancholy little improvisation.

“My dear, do not be troubled that the children know more stories of you than you yourself; it is the fate of all men, all history, to be transmuted into stories and relics, unless they are forgotten entirely. “

“And so all is doomed to be lost?”

“No, Jack, details are lost, but something remains, our offspring direct, of course, and perhaps unknowable and the Dear knows hopefully beneficial influences we exert upon our posterity, on the world.“

After a pause, as Jack settled upon the stern locker, Stephen continued, “Yet some memories exceed the span of our lives; as a society, a culture, we grow in knowledge, if not in grace, as the generations pass, for in science, in history, in legend, in music indeed, we can benefit, if we will, from the accumulated wisdom of our forebears. Though we rarely do, alas.”

Now Stephen began plucking at the strings, an inchoate melody, too slow for Jack to identify its source at once; but it was clear he was picking out a violin line, heralding of one of their games. Jack looked from his face to the cello and back, intent and charmed. Between the widely spaced notes, Stephen returned to their discourse. “The church preserves the memory of our Lord, and remembers her heroes and martyrs, whether accurately or no. Today is the feast day of one of our Irish saints, Lawrence to you perhaps, like that poor mid. To us he is Lorcán, Naoimh Lorcán Ua Tuathail, who distinguished himself by a life of piety and enlightened reform – he was bishop of Dublin - and as a mediator, advising your Henry II, and concluding peaceful settlements of English-Irish tensions – would such a one were with us today.”

“Do you say so? An Irish Catholic?”

“My dear, all England was Catholic in Lorcán’s day,” said Stephen, now using the bow, drawing out the notes.

“Are you sure, Stephen? Forgive me, of course we were … Henry II, and that grommet fellow.”

Stephen smiled, understanding Jack’s thought. “At Trinity, sometimes one would pray to St Lorcán for calm in the face of discord. I dare say he was appalled at how often we resorted to dueling.”

The cello’s faint melody became recognisable as Locatelli, and Jack joined in for a brief excerpt from their adapted sonata in D.

“Today is also sacred to the Welsh St. Dubric, who lived in Arthur’s time.”

“Now that’s certainly myth.”

“But history becomes legend and vice versa: Dubricius is certainly historical, and yet he crowned Arthur; I am not sure at this distance in time there is a meaningful difference.”

“Why is he a saint, then?”

“He was another bishop. In the early days of the church sainthood seems to have belonged to leaders, governors, rather as the English confer knighthood, the Royal Navy creates admirals -- perhaps even more apt, as in the navy a moderate dose of martyrdom can lead to promotion also.”

“Well, if I don’t get my flag for the one, perhaps for the other - ha ha!”

“God forbid – you have been wounded far too often already.”

“Strange to think about the hierarchies in heaven, with some well-behaved bishop finding himself sitting between God and the angels. It must take more than leadership, else Buonaparte could end up before the celestial throne.”

“Certainly it must, although we are promised, Jack, that nobody is beyond salvation. Dubricius was renowned as a teacher, as well as for performing the occasional miraculous healing, and, of course, for consecrating Arthur.”

“It’s not so very surprising, brother, that all this gets confused; you can never hope to keep your own life’s history straight, without you write it down. Naval history is more accurate by far, with our logs and gazettes; no confusion with legend there.”

“And yet you speak of Nelson with reverence, and repeat tales of his heroics; as time passes his flaws are forgotten and his excellence magnified; I have heard such tales repeated and augmented, nay I have heard tales of your own feats so treated, though in truth they are of heroic stature without any exaggeration. Who is to say what legendary status you may have achieved in one or two hundred years’ time?”

‘Oh, Stephen, how absurd. Legends are about kings and gods and such, Arthur and Achilles and so on.”

“Well, perhaps, but myths don’t arise from nothing, my dear. Perhaps the legend preserves some faint threads of memory of the real person, woven together with others to make an unfading tapestry. I can easily imagine you confounded one day with Cochrane or Collingwood, or even Nelson.”

Jack stared at him a moment, agape, then exclaiming, “Now there’s glory, Stephen!” he leapt to his feet and began pacing back and forth, eyes brilliant, face aglow. Stephen gazed at him affectionately, perceiving that his uncharacteristic melancholy about the children had disappeared.

After a few turns, Jack lifted his instrument and played a merry little phrase, then cried, “But if I am to be made into a hero of legend, what of my particular friend and companion, who comes unscathed through fire and water, especially water, ha ha! and can save the dying if the tide ain’t turned…”

“I am hardly unscathed; and I am surprised at you, brother, falling in with the superstitious notions of the foremast jack.”

“… so let’s make a saint of you: for you’ve saved so many, and you damn near was a martyr, Stephen, in Mahón.”

“Not a martyr, Jack, or at least not one to my beliefs, but rather to my own hubris.”

Sobering, Jack said, “Too close to being a martyr, too many times… but still, if yonder fellow is to be a saint for advising with a king .. your .. your other work -- “

“ – is not to be discussed. Hush now, Jack, I am no saint, and though you may be a hero in truth, we cannot know what time will make of us, if anything; for to be forgotten is the lot of most, as is perhaps for the best.”

“How can you say that? Do you not wish to be remembered? I do.”

“Perhaps it is the habit of seeking to pass unnoticed, but no, I cannot say I do crave fame; accomplishment, the appreciation of those I respect perhaps, that is something else entirely.” Stephen yawned. “Now joy, we have exceeded the limit – we have emptied three, no four decanters, and what is said of us two hundred years hence is moot. Let us away to our cot, if we can navigate so far.”

Jack found it strangely difficult to settle the instrument and to close the case; perhaps the wood was warping in all this damp. When he straightened up from the locker there was a brief burst of starlight within his eyes; he considered mentioning it to Stephen, searching for the words that would turn it into wit on the subject of celestial navigation, but they eluded him; and in any case his tongue seemed somehow a little bit warped itself.

He collected Stephen, swaying vaguely by the table as if he had forgotten what he was about, and, leaning upon each other, with stumbles and quiet laughter, they doused the lamp and made their erratic way to bed, in perfect harmony.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: a grommet forms part of a becket =)  
> A/N 2: not to beat it to death, but the point is, we know exactly what they are saying, exactly two hundred years further on.  
> A/N 3: the music:  
> Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), violin sonata op.5 no.3 in C  
> Pietro Locatelli (1695-1764), violin sonata op.8 no.2 in D  
> The unnamed piece is Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (1623-1688), _balletto_ “Die Fechtschule” – the fencing school. I don’t know where the score really comes from but took the liberty of placing it in a fictional book of suites, unattributed and without tempo indications, but obviously with the name attached. Jack is right, the third movement is a sarabande.


End file.
